- Forum >
- Topic: Hungarian >
- "Is this restaurant good?"
"Is this restaurant good?"
Translation:Jó ez az étterem?
21 Comments
"Ez étterem" - This is a restaurant (The verb van and the egy word are omitted, and "Ez egy étterem" is valid too).
"Ez az étterem" - This restaurant (yes, hungarians say literally "This the restaurant")
Hope i explained myself :)
This is the restaurant? is Ez az étterem?
So yes, if you see Ez az étterem it can be translated both as "this restaurant" and "this is the restaurant".
-
When the definite article precedes a word beginning with a vowel, it is "az." This is similar to English where we say "a banana" but "an apple." The only difference is that our indefinite article changes while Hungarian's definite article changes.
-
The word for "good" is "jó." The "o" needs an accent.
-
Usually when saying "XXXX is YYYY" you write the adjective first. I don't think it must be that way (natives correct me), but that's the most natural way of saying it.
-
"eterem" is incorrectly spelled. It needs to be --> étterem
Yes, I was writing my reply quickly, but what I actually believe I wrote was "Ez az etterem jo?" with all the accents correct but it still marked it wrong. I am a native Hungarian speaker as well. I didn't actually go to school in Hungary, but Hungarian is the only language I speak at home and I am fluent and saying "Ez az etterem jo?" in a conversation with someone should be acceptable.
Oh. I completely understand that. My computer autocorrects me and seems to hate Hungarian words, but I agree with you.
no, we cannot.
You can say Ez a jó étterem? Meaning Is this the good restaurant?
Nope, it should not and I don't think it will, no matter how many times you guys mention it.
This sentence is not a phrase. This means you are expected to provide a literal, syntactic translation rather than an interpretation. "Ez egy jó étterem?" would be "Is this a good restaurant?", we are creating a relation between a pronoun ("this") and a noun ("restaurant"). In the actual sentence, we are creating a relation between an adjective ("jó") and a noun ("étterem").
Otherwise, the sentences may well be quite interchangable semantically but hey, so is "I'd like to have some water" and "Can I have some water, please". And this case, I think there can be a difference actually - it would be odd to ask "Ez egy jó étterem?" if you are already there with someone and you want to ask about their opinion so far, on the other hand, "jó ez az étterem?" sounds quite legit.
Nope, that "ez" doesn't really belong to anything... oh I may get you. But still no. "Az étterem ez" for "this restaurant" is just as wrong as "restaurant this" is for "this restaurant".
352
I hope a native speaker can explain, please! I'm not sure what's the logic in this question.
I think that "this is a good restaurant" = "ez az étterem jó"
As a beginner, I would ask "ez az étterem jó?" (is this wrong?) My question is, how do we go from "ez az étterem jó?" to "jó ez az étterem"?
"this is a good restaurant" is "ez egy jó étterem".
"this" - "ez", pronoun
"is" - "", i.e no form in this sentence (technically, this empty string is probably at the end)
"a good restaurant" - "egy jó étterem"
"ez az étterem jó" and "jó ez az étterem" are syntactically identical sentences, meaning "is this restaurant good" or declarative, "this restaurant is good"
"this restaurant" - "ez az étterem", with "this" as an adjective in English terms
"is" - "", no form, most probably after "jó"
"good" - "jó", a predicative adjective that doesn't belong to the noun but the verb "is"
Therefore, I'd say both of your variants are reasonable translations here. The difference is beyond the syntax (grammatical structure) of the sentence, it's related to information structure, "emphasis" in simple terms. "Ez az étterem jó" - we make it clear what we are going to share a detail about ("ez az étterem") and then add the detail ("jó", it is good). In the other case, the new detail (also known as "focus" or "comment") gets all the importance while it's implied the listener is likely to know we are talking about this restaurant - it doesn't need to be clarified as much.
- 127
I thought that "ez jó étterem" would be good, with a question mark of course. But didn't accept it
Check the other comments. It's more or less consensual that it's important to learn the syntax with these sentences and therefore the structure of "Is this restaurant good" and "Is this a good restaurant" won't be treated mutually interchangable.
